VOLPICELLI, CATERINA, venerable. - Founder of the Institute of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart, born in Napoli on 21 Jan. 1839; died there on 28 Dec. 1894.
Desiring to embrace the religious life, and confirmed in her purpose by Fr. Ludovico da Casoria, she sought to enter among the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament; but illness obliged her to return to her family. She then devoted herself to the care of divine worship, providing poor churches with what was necessary, and to various charitable activities, offering herself also to God as an expiatory victim. Having joined the “Apostolate of Prayer,” she became its first promoter in Napoli. Made freer to dispose of herself by the death of her parents, she continued her works with redoubled zeal and fervour and associated other young women with herself, thus laying, in 1865, the foundations of her new Institute, which is devoted to spreading the “Apostolate of Prayer,” promoting and disseminating its various sections, and to fostering the Christian education of girls. The Congregation also includes a lay branch for young ladies and women, who aim to honour the Sacred Heart through their own perfection and the exercise of works of charity.
Strong and resolute by nature, she was able to give a distinctive character to her work, governing it with assiduity and care and multiplying its houses. The cause of beatification was introduced on 11 Jan. 1911, and the decree on the heroicity of her virtues was proclaimed on 25 March 1945 (AAS, 37 [1945], pp. 240–43).